To offer you even more information about the museum and Vincent van Gogh, and serve you better, we use cookies.By clicking ‘Accept’, you are giving us permission to use these cookies. Cookies help us to ensure that the website works properly. We also analyse how the website is used, so that we can make any necessary improvements. Advertisements can also be displayed tailored to your interests. And finally, we use cookies to display forms, Google Maps and other embedded content.Find out more about our cookies.

The Parisienne: Ultimate Fashion Icon

Baudelaire offered a lyrical description of a female passer-by on the boulevards of Paris, in which woman and clothes formed an inseparable harmony.

The printmaker Henry Somm specialised in this subject, as we can see in his etching La Parisienne. He did not seek to depict an individual woman, but rather a type that caught the international imagination.

Upmarket stores and couturiers made shrewd use of the myth of the Parisienne to advertise their fashionable clothes and other consumer goods.